


I Shook Hands With Everyone in a Dream

by Leidolette



Category: Sunshine (2007)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 06:18:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2802563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/pseuds/Leidolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two ways this plays out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. HARVEY

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lastingdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastingdreams/gifts).



What's the worst thing you've done for love?

The worst thing Harvey has ever done for love is ignore a distress beacon. Can you imagine that? Ignoring a distress beacon in the desolation of space, one that could only have come from your friends and colleagues. 

It was just a little thing, barely audible and barely distinguishable in the riot of information given off by the sun. But he identified it instantly. 

A distress call from Icarus I. 

He and the other communications officer on Icarus I had been neck-and-neck for the original position. The man lost on the Icarus I could just as easily been him.

But it wasn't. And Harvey was not going to risk it, even if that wasn't supposed to be his choice to make.

It would be incredibly easy to hide it. Almost everything in the communications area of the ship was calibrated to exchange orders and information to and from earth, or to gather information on the sun. There were just a few relatively unimportant sensors trained on anything else. 

He could always 'discover' it again on the return voyage, anyways. 

If any of the seemingly infinite pre-mission psych tests had predicted that he would withhold information from his commanding officer, there would have instantly been a different comms officer on this ship right now.

On the return voyage they once again pass through the orbit of Icarus I. The general mood on his own ship is incandescent. Harvey listens to the faint, dying call of the distress signal and doesn't say a word.

It was cruel. It was cowardly. 

And it saved them all. 

Harvey would sleep peacefully beside the warm body of his wife for the rest of his long life.


	2. KANEDA

Kaneda was saved from the worst decision he could ever make. 

Kaneda had done everything right his entire life. No one who'd done anything wrong would be captain of this ship.  
There were no accidents. There were no 'harmless, youthful shenanigans'. There was no bad luck. 

They had all been screened endlessly before the launch. Before the launch of Icarus I, even. Years of tests, both physical and psychological, searching for the tiniest weakness.

And Kaneda had to be the strongest of them all.

Well, second strongest, perhaps, since Pinbacker was selected before him. He wondered what set them apart. A couple of IQ points? A slight difference in lung capacity? Favorite color? Or was it simply international politics, which still existed even in a time that threatened to be the last age of man.

And now there was a decision before him. He guessed it was a historic decision -- every part of this mission was historic, really. 

The crew could vote on it. He was so, _so_ tempted to let the decision slide out of his hands as he lay in his bunk and imagined every possible outcome to the situation. 

But in the end, he knew the choice came down to no one but him. 

"We will continue on the scheduled course," Kaneda said the next morning at breakfast.


	3. MACE

This was supposed to be the space program where nothing went wrong -- because it couldn't afford to.

In the time between the loss of Icarus I and the launch of Icarus II, tens of millions of people had starved to death. Tens of millions more would die before they even reached the sun. 

He should consider himself lucky, and really, Mace did. All their families were being taken care of. It was the most effective bribe that could be offered to a group such as theirs. 

Mace never forgot this, not even for a second. 

When Searle would take watch the sun with such rapturous facination, Mace thought of famine. When Trey joked over breakfast, Mace remembered lakes that hadn't unfrozen for half a decade now. When Corazon hummed while tending to the oxygen gardens, Mace thought of pointless, desperate war. 

There was no wonder out here. Not until they finished this.

So he didn't fight with Capa, no matter how mad he got. It simply did not serve the interests of the mission.


	4. CAPA

He shouldn't be the one to have to make this call, thinks the desperate, weaselly voice at the back of Capa's head. They're all looking at him. He's known them all so long and worked with them so closely that he knew what each of them were thinking in this moment, how each of them felt about the drifting, dark Icarus I, and all the clashing possibilities ate at him. 

This was painful democracy. 

All these people, sharpened to a knifepoint. Sometimes he felt like he didn't belong here. Like he was slightly out of lockstep with the rest of the crew.

He locked eyes with Mace. Mace, who he had never gotten along with. He looked different without the beard that he had been growing these last, long months. He was blunt, he was abrasive, --

\--and Capa though that he was right.

"No," Capa said. Cassie looked away from him, disappointed. Mace's face relaxed like he actually thought Capa had done something right, for once. 

It had practically been a mental flip of the coin. In what world should the head-in-the-clouds physicist be the one to make this call? A very desperate world, he supposed.


	5. MERCY

Those that were able gathered in the observation room. Cassie needed to be in the pilot's chair, despite the autopilot, in case something went wrong. Nothing had gone wrong with the autopilot the entire journey and Capa found it unfair almost to the point of cruelty that she would have to miss it, the thing he'd dreamed about for years and years while the bitter wind had howled outside, the whole reason for this mission. Sure, she would see the readouts from the instrument panels in the cockpit and of course the view from Icarus II would be recorded for the history books -- but seeing it live, through the view screen, that was something else. 

But she gave him a smile with faraway eyes and said she didn't need to see it. 

The rest of them watched through the viewscreen as Capa's bomb sped towards the sun. The bomb itself was invisible on the screen, too small and insignificant to be seen. Only the timer tracking its path let them know how close it was it its target. 

The countdown reached zero. The bomb had actually gone off now, and they were just waiting these last few, tight seconds to see the results. 

Nothing, yet. The sun roiled on the screen, as monstrous and glorious as always. 

Capa stared hard. Was that a change in a coronal swirl near the equator?

"Increased shading of viewing window by .48% for crew safety," said Icarus' cool voice. 

The noise was deafening as everyone cheered. It was more than the sound of a handful of people in the viewing room, it was everyone. Everyone who was alive, and everyone who had ever lived under the everlasting sun. 

Kaneda held up the tablet that was running through the data checks and there was row after row of happy green marks. All sensor information was in line with the expected data of a successful mission. 

They'll know soon, Capa thought. Within nine minutes it would be broadcast everywhere on earth that the mission was a success. The thought was dizzying. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement. When he turned towards it, he realized with surprise that it was Corazon, sobbing uncontrollably. He did not think that Corazon had a hard heart. No one thought that Corazon had a hard heart. But there was something about her, especially towards the culmination of the mission that made her seem... stripped down to the essentials, he supposed. And there was only one thing truly essential lately: successfully delivering the payload. 

To see her crying now - openly, and full throated - it meant victory. It meant this was real. 

"We should be within comm range of Earth sometime within the next couple of days," Harvey said to the room at large.

\----

In the cockpit, Cassie watched the feedback of a dozen different sensors all spike at once, and smiled. 

She felt warmer already. 

\----

Mace cornered Capa in the hallway. 

"It was beautiful," Mace said. Strangely, he seemed even more serious than usual.

"It was barely visible."

Mace gave Capa the roughest hug he'd ever had.

They would return to the people they loved with the sun shining warm on their backs.


End file.
